Local Villager Stunned To Find Buddha's Head Emerging From The Water.

Imagine you're going about your business on a normal day when you look out across a lake and see a giant stone face looking back at you. One villager in the Jiangxi province of China doesn't have to imagine, that's exactly how they stumbled across an ancient statue of Buddha.

Water levels in the lake have dropped almost 30 ft recently because of a renovation project. That drop revealed a Buddha carved into the wall that hasn't been seen in decades.

"So What Did I Miss?"

The statue has been underwater for so long that many of the locals were unaware that it existed at all. One elderly gentleman recalled seeing the statue back in the 1950's. Officially, the statue, along with the ancient village it inhabited, was sunk in 1960 as a part of a reservoir project. At that time in China, there was very little in the way of preservation or research being done on ancient sites or artifacts.

The reservoir was built, the ancient village flooded, and nobody really batted an eyelash about it. Until now, that is. Researchers and archaeologists have descended on the site.

Every Time Someone Mentions Archaeology We Imagine This Face.

I'd love it if Indiana Jones got in on this action. He has to make up for the whole Crystal Skull debacle. Aliens? Really? Since, despite my sincere devotion, he remains merely a fictional character, we're going to have to work with actual scientists.

An underwater archaeology team is studying both the statue and the ancient village that it had been a part of.